Small and Medium Tourist Enterprises and Social Media Adoption: Empirical Evidence from Tanzanian Tourism Sector

Abstract

The increasing competition and the highly demands of globalization in tourism sector are increasing challenges in the market and operation of Small and Medium enterprises in Tanzania. In order to cope with these challenges, it is evidenced that the adoption of social media networking is an enabler of small and medium tourist enterprises in quest of enhancing competitiveness in their globalized market place. Despite of this benefit offered by Social Media (SM) to SMEs, very little is known on the factors influencing adoption of Social Media in Tanzanian Tourist sector. This paper aims at filling the gap by examining factors influencing adoption of Social Media Networking among SMEs in Tanzanian Tourism Sector. Questionnaire was used to collect data from SMEs owners and employees in Dar es salaam city, Iringa region and Rukwa region where geographical stratified sampling was used to ensure representativeness of the sample from the heterogonous population to form homogeneous group followed by simple random sampling technique which was used to draw a sample of 265 respondents for quantitative data and purposive sampling technique was used to pick sample for qualitative data. Factor analysis was used to ensure construct validity of the proposed conceptual model in this study while Cronbach’s alpha was used to test the suitability of research instrument used in collecting data for the study. Structure equation modeling method was used to test hypothesis on the factors influencing adoption of social media networking among SME in Tanzania tourism sector. Findings using SEM revealed that organization context and environmental context are significantly influencing adoption of social media networking adoption while technology context was found to be insignificant factor. This study recommended that in order SMEs to continuously be competitive in this global and dynamic market they should continue to adopt the use of social media networking as a tool to capture more customers worldwide.